your nineteenth month

As far as we were concerned,

you were quickly turning into an absolute genius.

Your desire to explore everything was fascinating.

Nothing was too boring or uninteresting to miss out on your inquisitive nature,

from water bottles to toilet rolls,

from the washing machine dials and buttons to road markings.

It was all just so intriguing to you,

and seeing the world through your eyes definitely made it a more amazing place for Mummy and Daddy too.

You were quite literally obsessed with numbers and counting.

Really, truly obsessed.

And listening to you count was so adorable.

Anywhere and anytime that you spotted a number,

a barrage of counting would follow.

And you were really accurate too,

one to ten was no problem

although you did sometimes forget seven.

You loved counting your food at mealtimes

and would sometimes even count backwards from five as you were eating your fruit.

You were learning new words all the time
and it was like the entire world was one big flash card;
giving you and excuse to learn and practise lots of new words.
And your pronunciation was getting clearer and clearer all the time.
You had always called Daddy "Daddy"
but Mummy had been called "mum", "mumma" and "mama".
All of a suddenly your were saying "Mummy" properly
which she happened to think was just adorable.

You were also starting to string together words into little sentences.

It was generally when you were after some food

so we would get some lovely sentences of "More. Blueberry. Pleeeeease."

Your animal knowledge was pretty impressive

and you only had to be told what an animal was once

and you remembered it really well.

You knew a lot of colours too

and it seemed like yellow was your favourite

as you liked pointing it out at every opportunity.

You had gone through a funny phase at meal times
where you would only eat food with a fork.
It was almost as if now you had mastered the fork
you wanted to use it at every single opportunity.
So you had eaten toast with a fork,
and brioche and bagels.
And apple.
You even wanted to try yoghurt on one occasion
but Mummy quickly convinced you that a spoon was better
as you weren't very impressed about the yoghurt dripping all over you.

Having called Darcy "Darce" for a long time

but stubbornly referring to Wentworth as "cat" because it was easier,

you were finally saying his name.

You called him "Wo-woff" which sounded so cute,

and he was definitely warming up to you

after always giving you a wider berth than his brother.

He clearly liked his new name.

You had a little trip to the hospital

which was pretty horrible.

Mummy fell over while carrying you

and you both ended up bruised and battered lying in the road.

You took a nasty bang to the head

which scared both Mummy and Daddy to death

and had to have a ride with Mummy in an ambulance to the hospital.

Luckily you were absolutely fine

and after a dose of Calpol and a once over you were given a clean bill of health

and proceeded to flirt with and charm all the nurses, doctors and radiologists that you came in contact with.

We were so proud of how you behaved at the hospital

and how brave you were about everything you encountered.

You were also an absolute star for Mummy while she recovered from the little dive you took,

although you didn't like that you could have as many cuddles as normal.

Cuddles and kisses were a real favourite

and you would happily stop wherever you were doing to give them if you were asked.

You also liked coming up onto the sofas for snuggles when you were getting sleepy

and would even move the pillows around to get yourself comfortable.

Although we were pretty biased

and thought that everything you did was awesome,

you leaning in for a cuddle with a big grin

while saying "kiss"

made us feel like a million dollars.